My Life With Master - First session

[Jeffrey Miller]

MLWM play summary

Last night I had the opportunity to run my first session of My Life With Master as a GM, and it was a blast.  Some snippets of story to illustrate problems/issues/successes/questions about the system.  Without further ado?

The Master
Dr. Van Voot, a Brain of Flemish Belgian descent, has set up shop in the high Flemish Alps in an abandoned astronomical observatory perched on a high cliff above The Village.  He, like most Masters, has a mad plan ? to harness the brilliance of lightning, and inject it into diamonds in order to make them sparkle brilliantly, even in the darkest of opera houses.  There is a sense that he is somehow attempting to do this in order to impress his sister, a figure of some obvious (but undefined) importance and tension in Dr. Van Voot's psyche.  The Dr needs to attract to his lighting rods only the most brilliant and powerful lightning bolts, and through a complex eugenics program and carefully managing the food supply of the village, is nurturing a bloodline of children who have incredibly high amounts of iron in their blood.  Somehow (it is still unexplained) there is also a pool of electric eels involved? Dr Van Voot has received news that his colleagues from the gemology and electrical research college in Vienna are due to arrive with the evening's stage coach?


The Minions
Orkney (John) is the Master's chief huntsman and enforcer of the eugenics program.  He smells like a hound, except when the sun is shining, but is heavy-footed, except when on stairs.  He plays chess in the park with the blind chessmaster Philo, and enjoys spending time with the man who oversees the Baron's herd of fine horses on the outskirts of town.

Vlad (Dan) was traded to the Master by another Evil Master, and as such feels a certain amount of friction, but serves Dr Van Voot faithfully.  He is immune to lightning, except after eating, and has a terrible stutter, except when around small children, and spends his days talking to Hans the lovable orphan, and his nights at the tavern commiserating with Miguel, the Spanish bartender.

Tutt (James) was saved by the Master from the clutches of the local constabulary after an unfortunate incident where he was herding "horses" into a corral; Tutt often mistakes small children for horses, except when the children are pretending to be horses.  His primary task is to take care of the electric eels, which he can speak with fluently, but only when his sentences contain a 'Z'.  He has a burgeoning love affair with Margaret, the mad dove-keeper who lives along in her cottage/coop on the edge of town.  He often attempts to woo her with sweets from Peoter the taffy chef's shop.

(Initial settings were Reason at 3 and Fear at 5;  this proved to be too high, and will be toned down..)

The Master ordered Orkney to run to the village and fetch the eldest Flemerson boy, a lad of 8.  Vlad is ordered to follow Orkney and report and misdeeds; in retrospect, Vlad should have had a more "protagonistic" task, but I was feeling that separate scene threads were going to be a challenge for the players.. oh well! Live and learn ? I'd only ever gamed with John before, and didn't know the tolerances of the other 2.

Neither players resisted the Master ? are they compelled to carry out his orders until the first die roll, as if they'd failed?

Orkney attempts to get some taffy from Peoter, but fails when he jabs his hand into the taffy bowl the Peoter was making fresh.  Orkney, his knuckles bruised from Peoter's wooden spoon, sneaks into the Flemerson's back yard, and tells the lad (and his younger sister, who were skipping rope to a nursery rhyme about the Master?) that he, Orkney, has been sent to fetch the children to the observatory, where their parents are waiting for them, so that the family can watch a lightning show together.  "Hop into this wheelbarrow, and I'll give you a ride?"

All the players shudder a little at this villainous act.

At this point, several scenes have gone on;  Tutt is off on his mission and Vlad, while following Orkney, has conducted a single Overture.  However, until I started handing out Self-Loathing points, and players started realizing "oh crap.. I gotta get me some love!"  did they start looking for opportunities to reach out.  Players seemed also to be hesitant to interrupt the narrative flow of "gotta go do the Master's bidding" to have a chat with a Connection.  I think this is a "holdover" issue, from not quite getting the differences in play structure between MLWM and, say, a more mainstream, non-Forge game, if you follow me.

Tutt has been tasked with visiting the widow Morrison's jewelry shop, stealing all the jewels, and setting her home on fire (apparently the Master attempted to purchase diamonds for his experiment there, and was rebuffed..)  Tutt finds the shop closed, a sign in the window reading "Out For Tea", but spies the widow in the kitchen having a cup.  ("She's not out for tea, she's in for tea!")  He rushes through the backdoor, exclaiming "Bears! Bears are attacking the village! Run to the guard tower for safety!  ?oh, but leave those tasty cakes? bears like cake you know?"  The widow runs screaming for help, Tutt stuffs the cakes into his sack and ransacks the shop.  He sets a small portion of the widow's kitchen on fire, but quickly puts it out, fulfilling the LETTER of the Master's command.

The combined Self-Loathing of these actions, however, shoves him into The Horror Revealed, which the player subsequently declares takes the form that Tutt's "little white lie" about bears manifests as true, as a cohort of angry brown bears swoop down on the village, raising much havoc and chaos.  Tutt watches in horror as his Self-Loathing manifests, the bears tearing down main street, bits of taffy from Peoter's shop hanging from their slavering maws, earrings and necklaces dangling from their furry hides?

Vlad, meanwhile, is tasked with delaying the Master's colleagues from arriving until the Master has completed his latest round of experiments.  "Go burn the ferry, Vlad"  He manages a sincere, intimate, desperate conversation with the ferry captain to start a small hay fire on the deck of the ferry, then "skip town" for a few days, taking the ferry downriver.  I awarded only the sincerity die for this;  the three dice do not stack, correct?

Vlad heads to the bar, where he finds the wounded and tortured townspeople recovering from the bear attack.  Bears are STILL on the loose, but he sits down for a quiet drink among the casualties.  Miguel serves him the usual, but makes a snide comment about Vlad's apparent uninjured, unmarked state amongst the dirty, bloody townsfolk moaning in pain and agony in the bar.

Dan decided that Vlad's connection to Miguel was an adversarial one;  the two men are in stiff competition with each other, ideally building towards a mutual respect as Love between them increases.  I wasn't sure if this was completely the vision for Connections and Love, but figured it was an interesting enough relationship to NOT let it play out and see what happens.  Miguel raises the ante by saying that if Vlad REALLY cared about the village, he would find a way to get the Master to help.  Vlad says something along the lines of "I'll show you!" and runs back to the castle to steal one of the Master's failed experiments (which resembles a giant shoulder-mounted cannon, which the player has yet to describe the function off..)

Orkney, meanwhile has gotten the children safely back to the observatory ("Only well-behaved and QUIET children get to see lightning shows.. I'll turn this wheelbarrow right around, if you're not good!")  and is ordered to put them in a special vat or tub which will be raised to the top of the lightning rod when the evening's storm arrives.  The Master departs, and Orkney is unable to convince the children to climb in to the tub.  To show them its not dangerous, and in fact, FUN, he climbs in himself, at which he blows his villainy roll.  The children knock the lid shut and run off into the observatory..

Tutt finishes his day by securing a "3 hour pass" from the Master, and after embedding some of the loot from Mrs Morrison's shop into the cakes he saved from the bears, he gives the cakes to Margaret the dove-keeper, who invites him inside for a nice cup of tea? fade to black.

Observations:

- I had Fear and Reason settings way too high.

- Players need to buy into the premise of that game. No incidents of "screw this master guy, I skip town and go to Istanbul" but I could see it happening in more adversarial groups.

- Players also need to understand the implied (and sometime explicit) scene framing and story structure elements of MLWM are not "deprotaganizing" but are instead empowering.

-   Intimacy and Sincerity are closely related in my mind, and I often defaulted towards Sincerity as an award.

-   Who wins ties? I didn't see anything in the text that leapt out at me.  Maybe a footnote in the "formulas" page (which was a godsend)?

-   Once players grasped the concept that getting Love was really, really important to their long-term "success" they grew more comfortable with inserting Overture scenes

-   I had some difficulty determining when RPing had gone on long enough to call for a die roll, whether in a scene of Villainy or an Overture.

-   Some scenes fit neither Villainy or Overture, beginning as one type and morphing into the other through RP.  This lead to some interesting discussion about intent and desire and if we were really angling towards something even more free-form.

[iago]

- I had Fear and Reason settings way too high.

Could you explore this observation in a bit more detail? What specific effects occurred in the game mechanics that make you say this?

[Paul Czege]

Jeffrey,

It sounds like you had a great game! And this is beautiful:

Tutt has been tasked with visiting the widow Morrison's jewelry shop, stealing all the jewels, and setting her home on fire (apparently the Master attempted to purchase diamonds for his experiment there, and was rebuffed..)

I can see that you proactively invented situational details on the fly, entirely as neccessary, to drive adversity. Perfect.

And the Master and minions are awesome. I particularly like Tutt.

Your questions:[list=1][*]I awarded only the sincerity die for this; the three dice do not stack, correct?

Correct. From page 32: "All gameplay leading up to a conflict resolution roll is taken into account, and one of these dice is introduced to the roll on either side of the conflict, at the option of the GM...."

[*]Neither players resisted the Master? are they compelled to carry out his orders until the first die roll, as if they'd failed?

Yes, exactly right. From page 26-7: "Players are never required to have their minions resist, but choosing not to do so leaves the minion just as compelled to carry out the command as if the Master had won the dice roll."

[*]Who wins ties? I didn't see anything in the text that leapt out at me. Maybe a footnote in the "formulas" page (which was a godsend)?

From page 26: "A tie result means the conflict was interrupted in some way...."[/list:o]Paul

[Mike Holmes]

Flemish Alps? :-)

So, did you decide on a somewhat goofy tone before the game began, or did it just evolve?

Mike

[Jeffrey Miller]

Flemish Alps? :-)

So, did you decide on a somewhat goofy tone before the game began, or did it just evolve?

I think it just evolved, as people fell back to "what they know" when faced with either the 'blank slate' of creating Master and minions, and then once faced with the actual -horror- of what their minions were doing ("I've been sent to fetch you to your parents.. don't you want to see the lightning show with your parents?")  Players slipped into comedy to alleviate their discomfort with the seriousness of what was happening.

-j-